That's what you get for making money and capital more valuable than education. Apparently he doesn't like to read either, so no wonder why Putin is laughing hard right now. Putin isn't a friendly democrat - but he would crush potus in any IQ tests....

The great filter must be nearing ;-D

Things have moved on here as well. Before Christmas the EU and the UK kind of agreed on settling the past, now they are talking about a transition period and the future. The agreements on the past seem to be a kind of agreement on a payment (no official numbers given yet), citizen rights, the role of the European Court of Justice and the Northern Irish border.

The border agreement actually is a bit contradicting and could lead to future problems. It basically says that the UK will ensure to keep the border open. However this seems to imply that they stay in a common economically regulated zone, which they may not want to. That seems to contradict with each other.

The actual negotiations are about rules of the transition period and the future relationship. Fishing quotas, passporting rights for the financial industry, etc. ... I'm sure they will find a compromise at the end. Interestingly, other countries like Norway are threatening to ask for better conditions too should the UK get a preferential treatment.

Except for the not really solved question of the Northern Irish border, the way ahead is pretty much straight forward and in March 2019 UK and EU will part officially and the transition period will last until about end of 2020 and from January 2021 on it's a third country with the EU membership being history.

Next regular general elections in the UK are scheduled for June 2022.

Just out of curiosity looking at the economic development: UK GDP growth 1.7% YoY, Euro Area GDP growth 2.6% YoY. UK is not as bad as some people warned before but also could be better.

Currently negotiations are continuing without much attention by the media. The only real obstacle is still the Irish border. Basically the British government promised a lot of things including friction-less trade across the Irish border, not staying in the customs union and not treating Northern Ireland different from Great Britain. Unfortunately not all of this can be fulfilled at the same time, so at least one of these things cannot happen. Also it's not a quantity like any payments where you can find a compromise in the middle, it's either an open border or it's not.

Solution is of course to decide what is most important and then act according to it. Ignoring the problem doesn't help (in the long run). Meanwhile the economic development of the UK is moderately positive (could be better, could be worse) with a weak pound and relatively high inflation and governmental budget deficit. Net Migration into the UK is still positive but declining.

The other points like the length of the transition period and payment details and rights of EU/British citizens seem to be solvable with some kind of compromise although it may still result in more turmoil later this year. The expectation is that if solutions are agreed upon until autumn this year, the division process will go through smoothly and in roughly one year Britain will be out.

The Irish border issue and it's implications seem to be best understood not by the current government with the contradictory statements listed above but by former PM Tony Blair who, I think, best summarizes the choice that the UK has: "staying close to the EU and minimising economic damage and averting a risk to peace in Northern Ireland or freeing itself from Europe’s rules in which case you have economic damage and are forced to have a hard border between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland." I think it really comes down to this.

Now the hot phase of the Brexit negotiation starts. At some point the British government must reveal their plan for the Irish border and the British parliament finally has to vote on the outcome of the negotiation. The Irish peace agreement, which today got 20 years old and worked remarkably well, ended years of terror in Northern Ireland. It worked somehow by both sides giving something and by pretending a border is there for those who want it to be there and it's not there for those who wish it to be gone. But this was when Britain was still inside the EU, but soon within the year, they will be outside and pretending won't be possible anymore. Difficult situation.

Parliament itself has the ultimate power here. The discussion is currently what it would mean if parliament isn't happy with the negotiation outcome. Does it mean a "hard Brexit" without any agreement, does it mean additional last minute negotiations or does it mean Brexit has failed and the invocation of article 50 should be tried to get undone? Nobody really knows so far and I hope for good debates in parliament. Maybe the opposition could be a bit more clear and vocal about their proposed solution.

In principle, I would also be curious what Britons think now about Brexit almost two years later. It was a quite narrow decision and while the economy has not done terribly, it hasn't done great either. Social welfare spending is continued to be cut even this year, hurting the poor even more. Of course there won't be another referendum, Britain is not really a direct democracy after all.

Anyway, the big losers will be those seeking work abroad. That means that those British citizens fancy working in the EU and EU citizens fancy working in the UK should probably start searching for opportunities now while they do not need to go through all these working permit hassles.

Also in the news, London is more violent and more people get murdered than in NYC lately. What is the matter there? Drugs, organized crime, economic hopelessness, not enough police men, ...?

The UK should give up nothing. They already are giving concessions that go against the very reason for leaving. If push comes to shove just go nuclear and take the hard exit. To hell with the EU.

All the talk that the UK was screwed after the Brexit vote turned out to be typical left-wing lies and propaganda, the UK economy didn't tank - it got better and is still getting better, the amount of new investment money pouring in is awesome,

In more good news, the Hungarian people voted wisely and re-elected Viktor Orban.

Like? (Edit: Fishing waters I assume?)

And while yes, the economy hasn't tanked and is growing (but less so than the rest of the EU), I doubt anyone predicted that by now still no one would have a clue what type of Brexit it was going to be let alone on what terms or even when... (@Transition period).

Nothing Brexity has come to pass yet apart from triggering article 50. Every day is just filled with companies complaining they don't know what to prepare for and that the relevant dates keep drawing closer.

If any tanking is going to happen, it's going to happen when Brexit actually materializes, which currently, it has absolutely failed to do, it's just a perpetual 'kicking the can down the road'. Look at the Irish border for crying out loud. Still no concrete solution has been decided on the matter yet it was supposed to be the first thing to be solved. At this point I'm wondering if the Tories are just trying to hold out till they can dump their reliance on the DUP so they can opt for a sea border. That or they're quite literally going to attempt the 'Well WE didn't put up a border. It's all the EU's fault for putting one up!'. Though I don't think WTO most favored nation status even allows that.

It's really interesting to follow though. It's a shame it's been pretty much absent on Skynews since the Skripals got poisoned. (anyone know any other news channels that cover UK news? The attempted takeover by Murdoch is not a highlight in Sky's history.)

In the coming weeks (few months) the final Brexit deal will be made. Finally, some decisions have to be made and the empty phrases of the politicians will be over. Staying in the customs union or not (currently rather looks like not), which kind of Irish border (hard or soft or something in the middle), future access for example of financial services from the UK. Meanwhile UK Parliament tries to have a say too (as rightly they should in a representative democracy) and former Brexit leaders try to get a permanent residence permit in EU countries. I'm quite confident that there will be a deal at the end. Even the divorce bill is settled (and the number of 100 billion discussed last year in the British media was indeed just a fake number as are so many things) and UK seems to be OK with it.

That means that in about 9 months it's over. The EU flag will be pulled down in Westminster and it's good bye and maybe in 10 years there can be another vote. That also means that there is little time if you think about working and living in the UK (as rest of EU citizen) or working and living in the rest of EU (as UK citizen). Time is short and plans must be made immediately. In one year, the road for that will be much harder and that is actually the true cost of Brexit. So everyone interested in that should hurry up.

I'm surprised that it's so simple in the end. Breaking off of the EU is manageable, economically and politically. Try that in other large countries like Russia, China, India, US, .. and you'll see what you get. It doesn't really seem to pay off economically, UK economy grows only very slowly, the 350 million pounds a week never materialized (and how can they being a big lie) and it's austerity instead. And those fancy working and living elsewhere are really the losers of the whole thing, but otherwise Article 50 gives the members a huge right and they can exercise it at moderate costs as demonstrated hereby. Surely, having your own currency helps a lot there, so breaking away example for Italy or Greece would have been much more difficult, but probably doable too in the end.

Now the question is if it also pays off politically. What will happen to the UK? Will it be governed by people like Boris Johnson who can say whatever they like and still keep his job? Will they have fun negotiating trade deals with Trump? Or throwing themselves in the arms of Russia and China? We will see.

Two weeks before, two years after the referendum a quite big march took place in London, one of the biggest if not the biggest related to Brexit. The demand was a second referendum, basically having the people their say again. There are pros and cons of it (if you can do it once, why not doing it twice ... and so on) but it basically shows the limits of direct democracy. Who decides when and what to vote on and how much time must have been between consecutive votes on the same matter so that on the one hand the outcomes of previous votes are not watered down but also not written in stone forever. Britain isn't a direct democracy and that basically David Cameron alone decided that there was a referendum was kind of a severe flaw of the system. The only working system is probably Switzerland with a very low threshold of supported people needed to trigger a direct vote, although I don't know how they avoid voting on the same matter a couple of times in a short period and what to do if the votes contradict each other.

The stance of the British government regarding the future relations, also affecting the departure conditions, most prominently the Irish border, has become clearer in the last days. The idea is a free trade zone limited to industrial and agricultural goods outside of a customs union.

Not sure if this will work though. The idea seems to be to track goods and tax them according to their destination. It sounds rather complex and requiring lots of technological and bureaucratic efforts to achieve this. On the other hand the EU could just refuse the idea and demand more freedom of movement as price for market access regarding these products. The wording is very weak, limiting movement of the workforce can mean anything. It's possible they could agree to a generous upper limit for example.

Interestingly, it seems bigger businesses not only want to move goods around as effortless as possible, but also parts of their workforce. Not being able to do that or needing to operate within different rulesets creates friction which means less wealth for everybody.

The economic question is probably if the greater flexibility of breaking up the unified market is worth the lowered homogeneity meaning more friction and less efficiency. Looking at the economic development of Britain in the last two years it may very well be a negative Brexit dividend, not a positive one. One would probably wait a few more years and then compare the economic developments again.

As for the question, when the next Brexit (or Brijoin) referendum could be, that is a completely open question. In five years, in 10, in 15, never? Nobody knows.

To me it was always more of a warning for anyone else thinking of leaving the EU. You can leave technically, you will just be ruined finacially if you do.

Direct democracy is ridiculous and should never be used. If every issue was decided by a massive poll of the people then nothing would ever change, because people hate change. Also most people are incredibly ill-informed and ambivalent. That's why most free countries are republics with representatives, and why most of those republics even have safeguards on the representatives. It's when these safeguards get bent that we end up with silly shit like Brexit, and when populous movements take over too much we get horrible candidates like Trump in office.

Not saying the elite/experts are perfect, far from it, but we're in a freaking death spiral the other direction. Moderation is needed.

The UK isn't a direct democracy and still it's in trouble. If it really would be a direct democracy, there would be a second referendum already scheduled for sure. But even that would face large problems like what question to ask. The negotiations currently do not evolve around a simple Yes or No but more about which kind of relationship the UK wants to have (customs union or free trade area, freedom of movement, common regulations, jurisdiction, that kind of things). That's a rather complex question and you cannot really decide that with a single question.

That's where the strength of a representative democracy comes into play. You can find compromises on complex matters which go beyond a Yes/No.

Elected representatives tend to belong to some rather privileged group (rich, educated, smart, upper class, sometimes all of these together) but that doesn't have to be, it's more of a side effect. Everyone can candidate and everyone is free to vote however he likes.

What I think currently is that having a strong constitution separating powers as well as staying away from extremes in election decisions is currently the best one can do. Everything else doesn't pay off in the long run. The real threat are autocratic systems which tend to suppress opposition by all means.

Indeed, but the problem right now in the U.S. is that the pleebs are voting in idiots in an attempt at a populist revolt against the elites, not realizing they're shooting themselves in the foot. I'm not a Brexit expert but it seems like a similar thing.


Yep, the strong separation of powers and oversight are what is keeping Trump under control for example. I don't know enough about the UK system to comment on its checks and balances, but I do think the referendum was dumb to begin with and could perhaps be countermanded in some way.

I have to confess that I have no idea how negotiations on this scale usually play out. It's supposed to be power politics, but then all participants should be clever enough to know that the other side is clever enough to see through any attempts to bluff and so the only rational choice (also quite saving time) should be to split the cake (or the absence of cake) and distribute the benefits (or costs in this case) fairly. Instead it seems that both sides still think they can outperform the other and wait for the other side to blink. This won't work and so there is kind of a verbal escalation right now because time is actually a bit short.

If history and similar big negotiations are any indicator, the less powerful participant (UK in this case to be honest) will blink, but only at the very, very last moment. There will be a deal and it will include major concessions of the EU and in particular of the UK, because the alternative of no deal that some hardliners would prefer, is just much worse.

The UK divorce payment (big numbers were floating around about that in the press last year) does not seem to be a big deal after all. The only two remaining things are the Good Friday agreement and the Irish border as well as the future economical relationship. The position of the UK is kind of half a single market, more than a free trade zone, mostly for goods, but with full competition on customs and without free movement of labor. The EU doesn't want that but wants to make sure the Good Friday agreement continues, however the UK does not seem to put so much emphasis on that referring only to some obscure magical, technical solutions that may or may not work.

Since the end of last year both parties seek solutions to this topic and haven't found any compromises agreeable by both yet and while the future relationship anyway was to be decided only after Brexit, the UK understandably wants to couple their agreement to the Brexit deal to some assurances about future relations.

The UK parliament seems to have declined staying in the customs union, but if more than a free trade zone can be achieved and how is open for now. In the coming months there will be some tension, but I actually think they will find a compromise.

If there would be one and the UK Parliament as well as the EU bodies would agree on them, one could even think about a second referendum (there is some momentum for it), because actually then would be the time one would really know what Brexit looks like, but then we would have three options (no Brexit, Brexit as agreed on, hard/no deal Brexit) and how do you ask for the best of three options in a single referendum? That again shows the limitations of direct democracy which gets really tedious (voting multiple times would be necessary) on non-binary decisions and most decisions (even Brexit) are non-binary.

Approximately six months to go and the negotiations have intensified. There was a meeting of the British PM and EU PMs this week and the result is that basically there is no agreement on two points (future trade and how to keep the Irish border open).

With the Irish border, the situation is basically unchanged for over a year, both sides rejecting the proposals of the other side (UK wants to implement rather unspecified technical measures and EU wants to check customs in the Irish Sea). The EU seems to want a clear solution of the Irish border question soon.

The future trade agreement was aimed at a partial participation in the single market, but the EU sees this as cherry picking. While the future relations are in principle subject to negotiations also after Brexit with a transition phase of almost two years, this is of course an important point, especially for the UK.

Nobody talks about the rest, so one can assume that there is good agreement about all other points. The height of the divorce settlement which was a big thing in the media last year, nobody seems to care about it.

The next two months will be quite interesting.

There was a recent report on immigration in the UK and it basically concluded that the economic contribution of immigration was positive, the collected additional taxes outweighed any paid social benefits and also there is hardly any evidence of things like crowding out local workers, depressing wages or increased house prices. It was a win-win situation, even though immigration could not be controlled.

This means that all EU citizens fancying working and living in the UK and all UK citizens fancying working and living in the EU should really hurry up now, especially if they are not super high skilled or rich (those two groups might not have problems even in the future).

What I wonder is, what the UK will aim for in the future? All the fantastic free trade agreements they are sometimes talking, I wonder how they can possibly be so much better than what the EU could negotiate as a whole, which is much larger than the UK alone. The only real possibility I see is lowering standards to get better deals. I wonder if this is really the goal.